Thank you! Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to devalue the hard work you put into your philosophy degree or your intelligence, I just wanted to make the pun. I really love your videos :)
the school that fined parents for tardiness reminded me of a joke: The headmaster of a boarding school was talking to the boys in his school: If you get caught in the girls dormitories you will be fined; 20 $ the first time, 30 $ the second, 40 $ the third; A student asks: how much for an yearly pass?
It reminds me of something I heard about how fines imposed for legal violations are a sort of regressive taxation, putting a much larger imposition, in terms of a proportion of one's income, on the poor than on the rich, and of a story of someone talking about their rich friend who overtly perceived illegal things that were only punishable by fines as things that they had every right to do. Like, "Hey, I don't think you're allowed to park there-" "Oh, sure I can! It's only $55!" There was no sense of it being a wrong thing to do, only that the fine was a nominal price for the privilege to do whatever he wanted.
agiar2000 interesting idea. You've got me wondering about the possibility of proportional or even progressive taxation for criminal punishment. For example an increase to tax rate, or even just fining based upon wealth. Alternatively you could flatten wealth disparity, but wealth based punishment could be a good way to get the ball rolling.
When I took Intro to Finance in college was by far been the best exposure I had to absurdity of living your life assuming that consumerism was the way to go. You can reduce the journey and achievements of a human life into a series of cash flows, investments and loans. It's at first exciting to be given the tools to understand the mathematics of your own retirement, but then it's soul crushing to think that you work your ass off your whole life just to make these numbers dance back and forth. Olly, you're right. It's no way to live thinking that qualities that make life worth living are measurable in money.
Listening to countless episodes of Freakonomics has convinced me that economists are all robots trying to understand human behavior. I find it endlessly fascinating and often insightful, but they are still all robots.
I know I am 2 years late but thank you for this video. I am so tired of all the arguments on immigration made on the good they do to OUR economy and OUR culture, when for me the question is it humane to prevent people to flee war, famine or just trying to improve their own life. I know that migration is vital for our western economies, but so what? If it wasn't, if it was bad would it still not be inhumane to let people die trying to cross the sea or the Alps? The argument also goes to labour laws, environment and all social issues. I don't care if fighting poverty and homelessness will means billionaires will earn less, as long as it prevents people to die of cold, hunger, to have short lives or just life of stress and anxiety on their next meal or if they have a place to live. The essential for me is for everyone to have a decent life, then we can talk about if people should be richer
exactly.. here's a good example. A friend of mine was turning 18 while his parent's divorce was being finalised. He was really close to his mum, but his dad was really really rich and even more authoritarian, so he had to stay with his dad. His mum wasn't even allowed to come to his 18th birthday party. They both got him a car - his dad got him a bmw 5, and his mum got him a cool retro car that she probably couldn't really afford, even though it was much cheaper then the bmw. But his mother's gift brought him to tears - it was a show of how much she cared for him and put thought into his gift.
I've been watching these very calming and beautiful videos lately of a woman in Azerbaijan making food from/in her garden. She has a super cool knife that's like a vegetable cleaver but with a spiky bit on top that makes it easier for her to cut huge beets and stuff that she pulls out of the ground. Naturally, I want. My American consumer brain tells me that if I have the same physical object that this woman has I will also somehow have her peace and contentment and all the things I actually covet about her life. Unbeknownst to me, my husband took notice of this and he scoured the internet looking for one for me. Neither of us have ever seen anything like it and he did so much research on it, even looking up info on knifemaking in Azerbaijan and Serbia. He looked into how to contact blacksmiths in the area and see about having one custom made. Now he wasn't able to make it happen - and I wouldn't have wanted him to spend whatever that would have ended up costing anyway; it is just a knife, after all - but the time and the effort and the intention were the real gift, whether I get the physical object or not. No matter what he ends up giving me this year, even if it's just a gift card or something, I feel like I've already been given the more important gift.
I wish you'd chatted a bit about whether we are justified in giving vastly disproportionately more to those who are close to us (friends family etc.) rather than distant strangers in greater need, but perhaps for another video. Greatly enjoyed this though. Merry Christmas :)
You forgot about the real reason we buy each other presents. Its because its a social convention that people judge you for if you don't participate in.
I think the best thing to do is to make something personal and explain why you didn’t just buy something, because if it’s bought you might as well have gotten nothing. I think if enough people do that it’ll normalize only making gifts for really special people and it’ll also make it more of a treat.
@@pigflatus7434 I don't necessarily agree. I have a family member who always gives us homemade candy at Christmas (with their business card, how sweet) and I think something like a second hand book on an interesting topic would feel much more personal. So I don't think whether something is handmade actually has that much bearing on how personal a gift is.
I think the other crucial point which you almost said but not quite is that giving gifts is not just about giving happiness to someone else - it is arguably primarily about giving happiness to ourselves - it makes us happy to feel like we have people we care about, and like we have done something that makes them happy, and that we are generous and virtuous. So even if we were to be able to assign a value to the emotional impact of gifts, we would need to add the value given to the value retained, which almost certainly would be above the financial cost of the gift regardless of the price.
I would say that there is a category of behavior called a 'ritual'. To underscore importance of something, or even to create importance arround something, you create a ritual. You underscore importance with sacrifice (including financial) Elaborate procedure and size of the group involved. The last part is the most important, for it is public display and commitment that force people into doing rituals. Even buying engagement ring for your girlfriend isn't actually a ritual between two people but is for benefit of family, friends, societal status, etc. So holiday gift giving isn't that different than saluting the flag, reciting prayers in church or wearing a suit and tie to an office job. In all those cases you are demonstrating importance and commitment by doing something that makes no logical sense.
The fact that it's based on eliciting emotions is not the same is it making no logical sense. Even if it is centered in ritualism, that doesn't negate or even lower the emotional value that stems from it. I would argue that what differentiates it from things like saluting the flag isn't about whether it's ritualistic by nature and more about whether it does more harm than good. You can certainly spend way more on gifts than you should and I'm sure many a child has saluted the flag without meaning any of it, and both those things would go against their logical intentions. However, trying to please the people you care about I would place in a different category from trying to impress your own ideals on people who you don't even know, let alone care about.
Christmas and gift buying is more then just trying to please people you care about. The whole society buys gifts, wraps them in colorful paper, places them under a dying tree in the house, and opens them on a same day. Clearly there are easier and more direct ways to please those you love. In fact, a lot of times you are buying a gift knowing full well that the other person probably doesn't want this junk anymore than you do, yet you both are compelled to spend time, energy and money in a pointless ritual.
Mirza Borogovac The fact that the whole society does it is less evidence that it's not about pleasing the people you care about and more evidence that it's an effective way to show people you care about them. I, and most of the people I'm close to, have no issues with giving or receiving unwanted gifts, but we've also always been pretty straight up about what it is we want, and I've never had to deal with corporate stuff like secret santa. I'll agree that the ritual is harmful if you don't enjoy it, but the people I spend it with tend to enjoy it. It really depends on your personal experience there.
Taylor Adams I am not criticizing Christmas. I think Christmas is no different than all the other arbitrary rituals in our society. I do not follow your logic. You can please people on any day. The fact that everyone does it on same day shows that Christmas is not about please people you love. In fact, you can get a much better deal on presents if you bought them right after Christmas.
Mirza Borogovac You could do it on any other day true. This is why if I had children I would celebrate Festivus instead and do it in July (but I'm an anti-natalist so take that with a grain of salt). But being able to do it any day isn't the same as being able to do it every day. More importantly the fact that it's ritualistic is not the same as it being arbitrary. Many people have real emotions about the ritual and those are not without value (good or bad). I agree that a huge portion of rituals may have been useful at some point but are currently either useless or counterproductive. Having a few set days in the year devoted to spending time with family (usually extended family or chosen family as well) makes sense to me. Let me put it in the form of an anecdote. I wouldn't know that I might be at risk to form epilepsy if I hadn't learned that my aunt was starting to have seizures last christmas. If nothing else there's a practical upside there. Sure we could have gotten together and celebrated some other day of the year, but would we have? no. People tend to need reasons to do things, even if the specifics of those reasons are otherwise arbitrary.
So, was the deadweight loss survey done immediately after Christmas? My understanding of behavioral economics is that perceived value would fluctuate, and the value of receiving the gift, if not the gift itself, would trend upward over time.
The value of the gift not being on how much was paid for the gift can be reassured by looking at gifts that are made rather then bought, and they cleary show the true value of giving: It shows that you care about the other person, and that you are willing to spend time, work, and in some cases money with that person, because they mean more then those things. At least this is how I think giving should work. Accept my like and comment on this video as a gift, and happy holidays
Thank you so much for this video Oliver! I had never heard of gift-giving described as you described in that Passage from the book Scroogenomics. That will make a person think But I think you make a wonderful point about how are you can't use money as of value measurement for everything. As a person who expresses love 4 friends and family by gift-giving, I personally don't mind if I spend a little more then they would have... Just so long as they are happy with the gift and they understand that I'm saying I love you when I give the gift. But you are also right 2 say that it's not a proper valuation of children to hypothetically auction them to adoptive parents. We all know people that would pay for child would never be good parents, they wouldn't be real parents at all, just buyers. What I mean to say by this is that that was an extremely good hypothetical. Really drove home the point that you can't commoditize relationships. So what I mean to say is, thank you for the food for thought. Very well done:-) merry Christmas happy holidays
There are two things I absolutely love during Christmas time (or any gift-giving occassion, really)--getting gifts for people... and wrapping gifts... I love finding thoughtful gifts for people (or making them), and I love making them look like beautiful works of art. When someone says to me, "Gosh, this is so damn pretty, I don't even want to open it," I am elated. I'm personally terrible at receiving gifts. I never feel like I'm worth the cost of them or have done enough to earn them. So giving beautiful, thoughtful gifts to others *is* a gift for myself. Having people in my life to think of and show appreciation towards makes me feel lucky and blessed. Having the chance to express my gratitude and love for them is a gift all its own. :) ...Also, let me know if any y'all need some gifts wrapped. >_>
Fantastic Christmas message. And for me Christmas is about family not gifts, but the effort others go to in thinking about and purchasing a gift is nice. I would love to see you do a category analysis of education.
My closest friends and family know me so well that they get me things I would choose for myself! I never thought about what it said about my relationships until this video.
I pride myself in being the most terribly selfish person... by helping my friends any way I can, because their well-being brings me extraordinary joy and fulfillment. This logic is applicable to basically any other human being, immigrants, homeless people, oppressed minorities, etc. Which is definitely something people at large could consider. I'm sorry I can't afford to finance you in any way, but I'll share your content around as much as I can because I think it'll be beneficial for you, my friends and contacts, and ultimately me, because I will see some good I have made in the world. Wear another jacket if it's cold, no need to turn up the heat! (I like my house at a chill 18°C, nothing a big sweater and a teapot can't warm up) Happy holidays! :0
Léo Zaffran I'd never thought I would find somebody who thinks similarly in that regard. :) I, too, deem myself selfish, because I try to be good and helpful, yet this only serves as a means to ensure my own piece of mind. Mostly, at least.
I think if I give someone a gift they really love but wouldn't (or couldn't) spend so much on, then their happiness at having the gift that previously seemed unattainable would count as a gain, not a loss.
Loved this! We usually make gifts in my family, or we just give money. The holidays is more about spending time with each other than the gifts, anyway. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! : )
Another consideration to keep in mind is that the gift itself and whatever bonding value it may have aren't the only things being "given" in a gift exchange. Let's say that you have your eye on a nice $1000 TV. If someone just _gives_ you $1000, yes you could then go out and buy the TV yourself. But part of your mind might also be wondering if buying yourself a gift is the best use of that money. If you do buy the TV, you might find yourself feeling guilty about spending the money on something nice for yourself, rather than something like paying off your student loans or saving it for emergencies. However, if I just _give_ you the TV directly, you don't have to worry about any of that, and I think that has a value of its own. To try to phrase it a bit more formally, giving a gift instead of money doesn't just _give_ the recipient the value of the gift itself; it also _saves_ the recipient the value of the mental labor that otherwise would've gone into choosing how to spend the money.
I know that presents are a social construct (I'm autistic, I'm very aware of social conventions), but for me gift-giving is an act of love. I've felt ignored all my life. Being given a gift makes me feel seen, and being given a gift that aligns with my interests makes me feel known. Both of those are invaluable to me. (And _literally_ invaluable to economists, ha!)
Returning to market theories of gift-giving, my family has a fair strategy to mitigate the 'dead weight' issue. 1) If the recipient is unlikely to be giving you a gift in return, and you don't have any better idea, give cash. You can't go wrong with cash. 2) In most cases, the best gift is something which the recipient wants, but would not normally be willing to buy for themselves. This creates value, rather than destroys it - the value of the item if they had bought it with money would have been net negative (they want it less than it would have cost them to buy it), but its value as a gift is purely positive (they did not have to buy it, and they -do- value it). Now it may be said that I paid 20 dollars for something the recipient only values at 10 dollars... but that can be countered with that they would not have the specific item valued at 10 dollars at all if they were just given money. They are given something they want, that they would not otherwise acquire for themselves. For example: My uncle usually receives some sort of unusual power tool on Christmas from someone. It's never a tool he would buy himself, but he likes making things, so the gift is on point. He now has the benefit of owning a tool he would never have owned otherwise (because it would otherwise not be worth buying it). It comes down to the fact that utility-value of a gift is not strictly fungible and not strictly transferable. The value I place on the money I spend on the gift is nonlinear in the amount of money I make. The value you gain from receiving the gift is not necessarily related to the value I spent on acquiring it. If I spend 20 dollars on a gift that you would not normally buy for yourself, as you only value it at 10 dollars, but I make enough money that my personal valuation of that 20 dollars is less than your personal valuation of that item, then in some sense net value is created. Or, perhaps, I gain some value in the act of spending that 20 dollars and giving you a gift. The value I gained in the act, plus the value you gained in receiving the gift, could well be higher than the value of that 20 dollars. So gift giving need not be some mystical non-market, non-utility idea. It merely takes a more nuanced idea of utility-value, taking into account all parts of the action.
For the record, there are economics texts that discuss the value of gift giving mot as a matter of pure economic exchange-where there is a deadweight loss-but as a combination of exchange and "signalling." The point of gift giving is both to "get you something nice" and "signal" to the recipient that you value their relationship enough to have gone to the trouble of getting them a gift, and a card, and wrapping it and all that. The wrapping of presents, which can take some time, is particularly economically destructive, because no one values the wrapping paper or the bow or the time it took to get it done anywhere near the cost to the gift-giver. The signalling creates its own value (not in a measurable "cash value" sense but in the more general sense of creating good feelings and "utility." Signalling explains the problem of giving cash. It may be the economically "best" present when it comes to deadweight loss, but it is also a "gift" that would not have taken the gift giver any time to procure or have required him or her to have any particular knowledge of the types of things the recipient might like. As a result it fails to convey that the gift giver places any special value on the relationship being honored by the gift. It creates a generally net zero transaction where I give cash to you which we both value at the face amount. (An aside, that might not be the case if the gift giver has a lot more money than the recipient since the marginal utility of the cash being given maybe less to a relatively wealthy gift giver than to a relatively poor recipient, so think of your grandmother giving you £5 or $5 as a child and the joy generated by that as compared to granny gving you the same gift as an adult.) I also had the chance to meet Michael Sandel and asked him about the daycare "fines" specifically. I indicated that the outcome, to me, suggested that the daycare set its "fines" too low, low enough that they didn't feel penalizing to the average parent. Surely at, let's say, $1000 per minute, parents would be very distressed to be late (unless they are very wealthy indeed). The parents likely would have stopped going to that daycare at that high a fine level, of course, which would suggest that fine is too high, but somewhere between what they were charging and a crazy-high fine I expect there a happy medium. Sandel didn't expressly disagree with that but stated that his broader point was about how imposing the cash fine changed the nature of how the imposition on the daycare workers was viewed. I don't challenge that, but still am left wondering how do you punish late parents apart from cash fines? Refuse their business next time? That's not an economically good strategy unless you are certain you can replace them. Put pictures f them on a "Wall of Shame"? That might work, but I know parents who wouldn't care and who, once they were on the wall of shame, would probably feel justified in being late in the future for the same reason as in the cash fine sense...they can afford that punishment for the convenience of flexible pick up times. In fact, the owner of the daycare, really seems to have found himself or herself an opportunity. Clearly parents wanted the flexibility. Nothing says that 6 p.m. or whatever time was set to close is in fact the latest workers should be working...the employees had just set their expectations around that time. If you adjust the expectations (possibly by hiring additional staff to serve as "evening hours" care providers), there is clearly a market to be served the gains from which could be split between the owner and inconvenienced employees. I have difficulty seeing that as objectionable.
Hey Olly, serious question here: What do your fellow students from university do for a living after they got their philosophy degree? I'd really love to study philosophy because it is - along with literature - the only thing in the world that really really interests me, but I'm a bit concerned about the job situation. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this - and those of the other readers of this comment as well. Also feel free to correct my grammar, I'm not a native English speaker, but I'd like to improve my skills wherever I can.
Lots of things you can do with a philosophy expertise. The world needs more ethicians. There's even a market for experts on ethics. What with all the corporate ethics committee and so on. Philosophy expertise is also vital to lawmaking. All lawmaking bodies employ all sorts of people with philosophy expertise. Philosophy of law is a thing. Philosophy expertise is also very useful in creative endeavors and storytelling. Nothing makes a good antagonist like one with a competing, credible and coherent philosophical stance as the protagonist. Also, all scientists need some degree of philosophical expertise, both to interpret the fact correctly, and to know what questions are worth asking. I don't know if you get there with a degree - but you do need the kind of expertise that a degree provide to excel in those jobs.
Philosophy degrees are good for a whole lot of jobs. There are tons of jobs out there where they just want their applicants to have a degree, not caring much about what that degree is in. Philosophy students tend to do well in that area because they tend to be pretty good at connecting what about studying philosophy it is that will help them in that field. Myself I stopped studying philosophy and poetry for those very reasons and went into computer programming because I was good at it. That's probably the biggest regret of my life.
A few went on to do further degrees, one buddy of mine went into fundraising for a bit and I think is now training to be a DJ, I know at least one other who's gonna go into acting like me. Some went onto teaching, management, consultancy... loads of stuff really.
saemundar That's certainly the way you would think it works. Fact is people who get philosophy degrees have a surprisingly high hiring rate. It's true that there are few jobs out there where someone would be doing philosophy full time, but it's also true that the skills you learn from studying philosophy are highly transferrable. I can also say that studying a craft isn't always the best way to get into working that craft. I got my highest paying programming job while I was still a freshman in software development because I was good at it and getting the piece of paper was really just a formality. Philosophy teaches highly valued thinking skills and so long as you can communicate what those skills are the world is your oyster.
You'll also notice that I said «philosophical *expertise*» not degree. A philosophical degree - perhaps, fittingly - is worthless without the expertise it supposes. Unlike some other degrees that allow to legally change what you're allowed to call yourself (ex - massor to massotherapist) or to become member of a professional order, which are valuable things independently of the expertise you might otherwise have.
It is showing your knowledge and care for a person... but also if you know someone wants something a lot, but they feel guilty spending money on it because they consider it frivolous, giving a gift might mean taking away that guilt from them while giving them something they really wanted.
BTW, everyone understands (including economists) that price of something is not the same as value of something to a person. Air is free but we all value it highly. However, having a price on something will affect the demmand and supply. IMO, when it comes to having a market for adopting children, the question to ask should be "is it good for children?" and not "Does it feel right to price children?" What if free market for adoption leads to all these children getting adopted into good families, that would otherwise have to scavage landfills in third world countries to survive? In that case it would be immoral to not have free market for adoption event if some philosopher doesn't like it.
There is a difference between valuing a gift after the fact(and value judgment) and actual happiness. Yes you may have valued it less. But it doesn't mean it made you less happy. What you should have focused on is the fact that material goods usually have a short lived joy. While spending money on experience have more longer positive effect on happiness.
A gift, assuming it's thoughtful (no matter if you want it or not) will build another type of story in your life than an item you got yourself. If someone I cared about got me a really ugly mug for example, when I did not need a mug and even if I did, I absolutly wouldn't have chosen that one, I would still, despite not liking the item, still accept it into my life, simply because it is something someone did put a lot of care into selecting. If we then fastforward a couple of years down the line, that exact initial dislike would have tought us both something that about eachother (=we grew closer) and I would eventually grow fond of it, because it would have made for a fun story and play a bigger role in my daily life, just from remembering it. So even if I would have bought the prettiest mug ever myself the same day I got the ugly one, A few years down the line, I would no doubt value the ugly one higher. The sentimental added value can't be meassured right away, atleast in my experience, but will in fact make the gift more valuable to the reciver than the initial price payed. Also, yes, I did get an ugly mug as a gift from someone, it did break years later, and I did in fact by an identical replacement for it, for way more (it cost about 10 times more than any of the other ones I got... ) than I would have payed even for a really nice mug... this despite that it was in fact still ugly to me, as I had a phobia related to the image on it. and yes, I realize the video is old, and I don't know if anyone will read this or if it's relevant to anything... probably not... but if nothing else it served as a good distraction from boredom ^-^'
will also add the sidenote that this in it self is not an argument for buying gifts, atleast not in it self, as it equally applies to things made or found outside for that matter.
what I value about gifts is the knowledge that the person (a) cared enough to get it for me and (b) payed enough attention to me/valued me enough to know what I would like.
Happiness and pleasure are two distinct things --- the former being longer-lasting and mediated by serotonin, the latter being short-term and dopamine-defined.
Ollie I love your chanel, I been subscribed for about 4 months now, and i think your channel is great I can't wait to see where its takes you. I have a question for you, I want to go to college for philosophy and do something with that when I'm older do you have any advice for me.
Last Christmas, my good-mother wanted to give me a gift, she didn't give any the previous year and she wanted to give me something. At first, she wanted me to buy something and she would pay me the price, and I refused, what I proposed to her was that I would send her a "wishlist" of miniatures (one of my hobbies is to paint minis) and she would choose from that list, and everything in the list would be something I would buy at some point.
I personally find the gift itself secondary to the symbolic representation of caring for another person. It is a reminder that caring for one another is important at the darkest time of the year. Reducing the gift giving to a commercial exchange robs it if most of the meaning and thus the value.
I would argue that Waldfogel is still right. More often than not, we *don't* actually know what the people in our lives want, and while it can be very emotional and connecting to get someone something they might not even think they'd like, more often than not, exchanging gifts can show someone how little you actually know or care about them. For instance, my uncle was so excited because for some Godforsaken reason he thought my mom would really love the Megyn Kelly book he got her. It's become a bit of a joke today. At the same time, I made sure to repeatedly state that the one thing I want is a razor, and this is possibly the only Christmas where I've gotten the thing that I actually wanted.
Today I learned the theory of school staff noticing whether children have been picked up or not and where parents are even expected to do so. Back in the day we had legs and bicycles and even school buses which brought the students home. If not confined in a meeting most teachers fled the premises even faster than the pupils, I think. When classes lasted as late as 14 h the cleaning staff would be the only still present in the building and had their whole work day still ahead of them. Nowadays stressed out parents block the street with their SUVs making it necessary for it to become a oneway to handle the massive traffic like they couldn't get their offsping in front of the PC to play Minecraft fast enough.
Here I thought I would have to question spending my surplus on loved ones instead of people in need, or maybe my eating of christmas-meat. Dodged a bullet! I don't even have to try to equillibriate my money spending as I try to, since my spending will probably reflect my relationships even if I try to lie by giving better gifts. Happy holidays one and all!
Philosophy Tube: Presents are part of the holiday of Christmas, aren't they? So does that make it a ritual? No. Ollie, tell me: Do we not give people presents to show them that we love them? Is money not just a petty thing? Back when money did not exist, humans would have gifted each other presents that may have been very valuable and expensive, yet even for poorer person (again, considering this is back when money didn't exist and this is based off of a guess of the types of families) they would have bought it just to say 'Well, I don't care. I love *NAME HERE* and really need to show it. Money won't matter.' Also, you can't buy happiness, right? So if the value of a gift determines the happiness of somebody, they should not have been given a gift in the first place! For the most part, gift-giving is about expressing your love for others, is it not? Therefore, if the recipient doesn't believe they would have paid the value of the present for themselves, they just need to suck it up and acknowledge that the person who gave it to them did it out of love and kindness! Especially for children!! Children nowadays think that Christmas is all about getting good presents. Like I stated earlier, its not. Its about understanding why in the giver's mind that present was given to them! Thankyou. Sorry for the looong comment... had so much to say. Also, I am considering a philosophy degreee for uni in a few years time, would it be a good idea to go through with it? Cheers, Rocky Road
Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The theory of gift giving that all anthropologist have to read. And it talks about competitive gift giving. And for your debate about Immigration, to accept people into a country with stability from a place with less stability is mostly a duty to the world if the instability is to be blamed on foreign powers if they are political or military.
I'd say you aren't always necessarily the best arbiter of your own happiness, especially if you have financial obligations. Even if you could comfortably meet all of your obligations, their presence can compel you to hold on to money you don't really need. By buying someone a gift, you're guaranteeing that they'll get something they enjoy, as opposed to saving it for future necessities. I'd say this is a good example of our idea of financial responsibility being somewhat biased. We tend to think of maximizing our financial stability as being responsible, but is it really if it comes at the cost of potential happiness?
but someone wouldnt just buy themselves a bunch of things at once at a certain date, the fact that you get a lot of things at once combined with the factor of suprise is what makes christmas and birthdays exciting
I wonder if Waldfogel considered that the difference of what people would be willing to spend might be from what they can afford? If the $13B were all from that, that would be, in theory, an economic boon then, yes?
Thanks Olly, wishing you a great Christmas and New Year's! I have mixed feelings on giving and receiving presents, particularly when we don't know people well. Then I sometimes get a present that is of no value or interest to me. So, What is the philosophy of Re-Gifting?
Okay, from about 4:02 on I got really distracted by the tendril of hair that started slowly moving in to attack Olly's right eye. Is it a spider that lives in his hair, slowly moving in for the strike? I'm sure the philosophy was top notch, but the hair spider upstaged it. By 6:00 I had to pause and skip ahead to see if Olly still had his eye by the end. He did, but my hope of it surviving long after the camera turned off is low enough that I'm going to be on the lookout for prosthetic eyes in his next videos.
You can measure the distance to the moon in degrees Celsius, use just multiple by a constant with the units degrees Celsius per meter. I don't know why you would want to do that, but can...
This is also assuming that things you can buy make you happy. In reality you can't just become happier by having more trash around. You can be unhappy by not having enough things to fulfill your needs, but you cannot become happier by exceeding those needs. A good gift has nothing to do with the gift itself. A good gift needs an intended meaning behind it. If someone gets you exactly what you would have gotten by yourself it lacks any meaning, it just feels like someone bought the thing you were going to buy for you. I would argue that a good gift is rarely material.
Fuck yeah, I adore the philosophy behind economics! :D I play the rpg Mage: the Ascension which features a group called the Syndicate who focus on hyper-economics, probability, and value. Economic philosophy provides fantastic fodder for Syndicate econo-mancers.
I know this is a fairly old video, and you may not see this, but isn’t another way to look at the discrepancy talked about by Waldfogel between estimated value and cost of gifts be that the people asked are estimating what the gift giver was willing to spend on them, and therefore the value of the gift would technically be higher than the estimated cost?
I was picturing my mom and when you asked how much you would have to pay i physically shook my head in disbelief cuz the idea just does not make sense to me. I could never stop speaking to my mom
I think the value lost in gift giving is why a lot of millennials are leaning into experiences as gifts. If you give me an object that I either would have paid half what you did or may need/want but of higher quality than you are willing to pay, I have to either store or dispose of that gift. It would be better in that case to either give toward the investment I would make in the higher quality item or give an experience that I may not otherwise have the chance or curiosity to try.
I appreciate the category error argument, but I am drawn to the economist's argument for a slightly different reason. Every year I buy things for my family out of obligation of signaling that I love them. This year, I felt far more satisfied buying gifts for my best friend's new family (he has
In employing somebody, you've just put a money value for their 8 hours of their life. Some are luck (like my self, a programmer) but many are not so lucky. I've seen doctors in my country working as nurse abroad. Most nursing graduates here become call center agents. Of course, I've looked into this and search for a solution. So far that best one I can see is Worker-Cooperatives. Where the owners of the business are also the workers. It's like a partnership, but can be with more persons. This has been done in a large scale, not perfect, but still successful - Mondragon, Spain.
Im not sure money and relationships are necessarily category error prone. I mean some relationships to some people. But give me 5 million and as good as my parents are i'd leave them behind Maybe that says a lot about me, or my relationship with my parents but i cant think of a single relationship i have that you couldnt buy off me But certain irreplaceable relationships are more valuable than infinite wealth, such as potentially the spouse you've been with for decades. It feels wrong to translate the value into money, but money can be turned into happiness and their relationship with you is valued in happiness.
For me though, personally I never give gifts to people unless I know what they like in the current time. If not, I give them Amazon Gift Cards. But I only had few people to give, and my friends likes to give random gift exchanges, so the issue of value for us really was irrelevant.
Could the deadweight loss be made up by the act of acquiring the gift? For example, if the giver got the gift from ebay and the receiver does not know how to use ebay.
According to this logic, and I tend to agree, the current financial system - neoliberalism, people in a system of money - is itself an enormous *category error*... poop 7.30-ish Abigail made my point as I was typing it.
Actually, as a half of a couple that has adopted, “Bid-A-Kid” sounds kind of nice. It is INSANELY difficult to adopt a child (at least in the US). It’s still stupid-expensive. Maybe we could at least speed it up and make it easier
I ask people to give me money instead for just that reason. I vastly prefer to be able to spend on what I want, or on my actual physical needs like food
But shoudn't we accept the supposedly large amount of money to never speak to our loved ones again so that we can donate it to charity? Isn't that the moral thing to do in that case? Also, I don't know about other people, but I see myself making new friends much easier than I see myself making large amounts of money. And it's not clear that any singular human interaction I have would make me more happy than, never worry about having enough money to buy food/pay rent/fix something that breaks/get medical treatment if I get sick ever again. Money, or lack of it, gives me anxiety, and I'd readily give up any one relationship I have with people to make it go away. Except maybe with the one person I know who fears abandonment - and it's not that I'd prefer my relationship with that person, it's just that it would seem unusually cruel to abandon the one person who fears abandonment above all in exchange for money.
To play devil's advocate, I'm not sure the reason no amount of money could convince most people to never talk to a loved one again is _actually_ because that transcends value or anything. It might simply be that nothing that could be purchased with money would typically be of equivalent personal value. However that's not necessarily always true, for instance if you had family members being held hostage, then suddenly never speaking to a family member becomes a deal that has a clear value; namely how much the ransom is.
Look at you overlapping with Adam Conover. And the distinctions you made about Waldfogel's logic were pretty much exactly what I was thinking during that segment of the last Adam Ruins Everything. While I agree there's a category error there and that's the primary issue with his argument, I also think there are other, more direct problems. We don't buy gifts based directly on the value the receiver places on them, we give gifts based on the value that we place on the receiver having them. This is surely affected by the value we think the receiver would place on them, but the whole idea of gift giving is to buy something for someone that they Wouldn't buy for themselves, so paying more in order for them to have something that they want but still otherwise wouldn't have is precisely where all that extra value in the gift comes from. The gift can lose value if we fail to estimate the value that the receiver places on it (though I don't think anyone would disagree that giving someone something they don't want sucks), but not only does it not lose value just because we're paying more for it than the receiver would have paid, it's kinda the entire point.
All too often there is nothing a person particularly needs or wants (or they just want less junk). It's possible to provide them some kind of service but that isn't always an option. We sacrifice the environment, and put pressure on low income families (in fairness, I. cannot speak for them). People often work long hours during the holiday season-- shouldn't spending time with loved ones be more important than driving this process? Obviously, holiday shopping may be good for the economy and it is a tradition. But I still think we overdo it. We each have multiple occasions a year in which to exchange gifts, and a year is not that long. At least when you are an adult. Perhaps more monetary gifts or less gifts in general would be of value?
From a utilitarian point of view we should probably give up the relationship, take the money and do something good with it. Save lives, maybe create fair jobs in third world countries, etc. It would be hard of course, impossible for most people. If I was in such a situation, I would be haunted by my decision anyway - giving up my closest friends and family or letting people suffer because of selfishness. Difficult.
![[UNCUT]"ทนายตั้ม" แฉยับ! ความลับสวรรค์ ใครคือ "บิ๊กเทวดา" ของบอสพอล l คนดังนั่งเคลียร์ l 15 ต.ค. 67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ru9fpSaUwdA/mqdefault.jpg)
"Let's say I get you a present for Christmas and it's something really thoughtful, really tailored to your interests..."
So this channel.
RealCoolCowboy Awwww XD
Olly, if your flat is cold, maybe you need a few more degrees.
AYYYYYY but seriously it sucks that your flat is that cold :( Good luck, man!
Hah, that is really funny to be fair
Thank you! Just to be clear, I wasn't trying to devalue the hard work you put into your philosophy degree or your intelligence, I just wanted to make the pun. I really love your videos :)
the school that fined parents for tardiness reminded me of a joke:
The headmaster of a boarding school was talking to the boys in his school: If you get caught in the girls dormitories you will be fined; 20 $ the first time, 30 $ the second, 40 $ the third; A student asks: how much for an yearly pass?
It reminds me of something I heard about how fines imposed for legal violations are a sort of regressive taxation, putting a much larger imposition, in terms of a proportion of one's income, on the poor than on the rich, and of a story of someone talking about their rich friend who overtly perceived illegal things that were only punishable by fines as things that they had every right to do. Like, "Hey, I don't think you're allowed to park there-" "Oh, sure I can! It's only $55!" There was no sense of it being a wrong thing to do, only that the fine was a nominal price for the privilege to do whatever he wanted.
agiar2000 interesting idea. You've got me wondering about the possibility of proportional or even progressive taxation for criminal punishment. For example an increase to tax rate, or even just fining based upon wealth. Alternatively you could flatten wealth disparity, but wealth based punishment could be a good way to get the ball rolling.
When I took Intro to Finance in college was by far been the best exposure I had to absurdity of living your life assuming that consumerism was the way to go. You can reduce the journey and achievements of a human life into a series of cash flows, investments and loans. It's at first exciting to be given the tools to understand the mathematics of your own retirement, but then it's soul crushing to think that you work your ass off your whole life just to make these numbers dance back and forth.
Olly, you're right. It's no way to live thinking that qualities that make life worth living are measurable in money.
Christmas presents as relationships yaaaaas
Listening to countless episodes of Freakonomics has convinced me that economists are all robots trying to understand human behavior. I find it endlessly fascinating and often insightful, but they are still all robots.
I actually shivered and said "Ew" out loud when he mentioned the idea of creating a market for adoption where the one who bids the most gets the baby
I know I am 2 years late but thank you for this video. I am so tired of all the arguments on immigration made on the good they do to OUR economy and OUR culture, when for me the question is it humane to prevent people to flee war, famine or just trying to improve their own life. I know that migration is vital for our western economies, but so what? If it wasn't, if it was bad would it still not be inhumane to let people die trying to cross the sea or the Alps?
The argument also goes to labour laws, environment and all social issues. I don't care if fighting poverty and homelessness will means billionaires will earn less, as long as it prevents people to die of cold, hunger, to have short lives or just life of stress and anxiety on their next meal or if they have a place to live. The essential for me is for everyone to have a decent life, then we can talk about if people should be richer
Olly, I'm disappointed. You missed the obvious eBaby pun.
Darn, you're right!
David1Watts which one?
exactly.. here's a good example. A friend of mine was turning 18 while his parent's divorce was being finalised. He was really close to his mum, but his dad was really really rich and even more authoritarian, so he had to stay with his dad. His mum wasn't even allowed to come to his 18th birthday party. They both got him a car - his dad got him a bmw 5, and his mum got him a cool retro car that she probably couldn't really afford, even though it was much cheaper then the bmw. But his mother's gift brought him to tears - it was a show of how much she cared for him and put thought into his gift.
It's not just about the value of the gift. It's the value of the gift plus the immeasurable values of the exchange (gratitude, trust, happiness, etc.)
I've been watching these very calming and beautiful videos lately of a woman in Azerbaijan making food from/in her garden. She has a super cool knife that's like a vegetable cleaver but with a spiky bit on top that makes it easier for her to cut huge beets and stuff that she pulls out of the ground. Naturally, I want. My American consumer brain tells me that if I have the same physical object that this woman has I will also somehow have her peace and contentment and all the things I actually covet about her life.
Unbeknownst to me, my husband took notice of this and he scoured the internet looking for one for me. Neither of us have ever seen anything like it and he did so much research on it, even looking up info on knifemaking in Azerbaijan and Serbia. He looked into how to contact blacksmiths in the area and see about having one custom made. Now he wasn't able to make it happen - and I wouldn't have wanted him to spend whatever that would have ended up costing anyway; it is just a knife, after all - but the time and the effort and the intention were the real gift, whether I get the physical object or not. No matter what he ends up giving me this year, even if it's just a gift card or something, I feel like I've already been given the more important gift.
You're an inspiration to me.
Thank you so much for always helping us to see another perspective that is often overlooked. Happy holidays 😊
I wish you'd chatted a bit about whether we are justified in giving vastly disproportionately more to those who are close to us (friends family etc.) rather than distant strangers in greater need, but perhaps for another video.
Greatly enjoyed this though. Merry Christmas :)
You forgot about the real reason we buy each other presents. Its because its a social convention that people judge you for if you don't participate in.
I think the best thing to do is to make something personal and explain why you didn’t just buy something, because if it’s bought you might as well have gotten nothing. I think if enough people do that it’ll normalize only making gifts for really special people and it’ll also make it more of a treat.
@@pigflatus7434 I don't necessarily agree. I have a family member who always gives us homemade candy at Christmas (with their business card, how sweet) and I think something like a second hand book on an interesting topic would feel much more personal. So I don't think whether something is handmade actually has that much bearing on how personal a gift is.
I think the other crucial point which you almost said but not quite is that giving gifts is not just about giving happiness to someone else - it is arguably primarily about giving happiness to ourselves - it makes us happy to feel like we have people we care about, and like we have done something that makes them happy, and that we are generous and virtuous. So even if we were to be able to assign a value to the emotional impact of gifts, we would need to add the value given to the value retained, which almost certainly would be above the financial cost of the gift regardless of the price.
I would say that there is a category of behavior called a 'ritual'. To underscore importance of something, or even to create importance arround something, you create a ritual.
You underscore importance with sacrifice (including financial) Elaborate procedure and size of the group involved. The last part is the most important, for it is public display and commitment that force people into doing rituals. Even buying engagement ring for your girlfriend isn't actually a ritual between two people but is for benefit of family, friends, societal status, etc.
So holiday gift giving isn't that different than saluting the flag, reciting prayers in church or wearing a suit and tie to an office job. In all those cases you are demonstrating importance and commitment by doing something that makes no logical sense.
The fact that it's based on eliciting emotions is not the same is it making no logical sense. Even if it is centered in ritualism, that doesn't negate or even lower the emotional value that stems from it. I would argue that what differentiates it from things like saluting the flag isn't about whether it's ritualistic by nature and more about whether it does more harm than good. You can certainly spend way more on gifts than you should and I'm sure many a child has saluted the flag without meaning any of it, and both those things would go against their logical intentions. However, trying to please the people you care about I would place in a different category from trying to impress your own ideals on people who you don't even know, let alone care about.
Christmas and gift buying is more then just trying to please people you care about. The whole society buys gifts, wraps them in colorful paper, places them under a dying tree in the house, and opens them on a same day. Clearly there are easier and more direct ways to please those you love.
In fact, a lot of times you are buying a gift knowing full well that the other person probably doesn't want this junk anymore than you do, yet you both are compelled to spend time, energy and money in a pointless ritual.
Mirza Borogovac The fact that the whole society does it is less evidence that it's not about pleasing the people you care about and more evidence that it's an effective way to show people you care about them. I, and most of the people I'm close to, have no issues with giving or receiving unwanted gifts, but we've also always been pretty straight up about what it is we want, and I've never had to deal with corporate stuff like secret santa. I'll agree that the ritual is harmful if you don't enjoy it, but the people I spend it with tend to enjoy it. It really depends on your personal experience there.
Taylor Adams I am not criticizing Christmas. I think Christmas is no different than all the other arbitrary rituals in our society.
I do not follow your logic. You can please people on any day. The fact that everyone does it on same day shows that Christmas is not about please people you love. In fact, you can get a much better deal on presents if you bought them right after Christmas.
Mirza Borogovac You could do it on any other day true. This is why if I had children I would celebrate Festivus instead and do it in July (but I'm an anti-natalist so take that with a grain of salt). But being able to do it any day isn't the same as being able to do it every day. More importantly the fact that it's ritualistic is not the same as it being arbitrary. Many people have real emotions about the ritual and those are not without value (good or bad). I agree that a huge portion of rituals may have been useful at some point but are currently either useless or counterproductive. Having a few set days in the year devoted to spending time with family (usually extended family or chosen family as well) makes sense to me.
Let me put it in the form of an anecdote. I wouldn't know that I might be at risk to form epilepsy if I hadn't learned that my aunt was starting to have seizures last christmas. If nothing else there's a practical upside there. Sure we could have gotten together and celebrated some other day of the year, but would we have? no. People tend to need reasons to do things, even if the specifics of those reasons are otherwise arbitrary.
So, was the deadweight loss survey done immediately after Christmas? My understanding of behavioral economics is that perceived value would fluctuate, and the value of receiving the gift, if not the gift itself, would trend upward over time.
Hold on.... Why does it say this comment was made a month ago, when the video was only out last week!?!?
Johannes Climacus One of the Patreon tiers is early access to videos. Longer lead time here than what's typical though.
Oh shit, cool.
The value of the gift not being on how much was paid for the gift can be reassured by looking at gifts that are made rather then bought, and they cleary show the true value of giving: It shows that you care about the other person, and that you are willing to spend time, work, and in some cases money with that person, because they mean more then those things. At least this is how I think giving should work. Accept my like and comment on this video as a gift, and happy holidays
"maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store"
Thank you so much for this video Oliver! I had never heard of gift-giving described as you described in that Passage from the book Scroogenomics. That will make a person think
But I think you make a wonderful point about how are you can't use money as of value measurement for everything. As a person who expresses love 4 friends and family by gift-giving, I personally don't mind if I spend a little more then they would have... Just so long as they are happy with the gift and they understand that I'm saying I love you when I give the gift. But you are also right 2 say that it's not a proper valuation of children to hypothetically auction them to adoptive parents. We all know people that would pay for child would never be good parents, they wouldn't be real parents at all, just buyers. What I mean to say by this is that that was an extremely good hypothetical. Really drove home the point that you can't commoditize relationships. So what I mean to say is, thank you for the food for thought. Very well done:-) merry Christmas happy holidays
There are two things I absolutely love during Christmas time (or any gift-giving occassion, really)--getting gifts for people... and wrapping gifts... I love finding thoughtful gifts for people (or making them), and I love making them look like beautiful works of art. When someone says to me, "Gosh, this is so damn pretty, I don't even want to open it," I am elated.
I'm personally terrible at receiving gifts. I never feel like I'm worth the cost of them or have done enough to earn them. So giving beautiful, thoughtful gifts to others *is* a gift for myself. Having people in my life to think of and show appreciation towards makes me feel lucky and blessed. Having the chance to express my gratitude and love for them is a gift all its own. :)
...Also, let me know if any y'all need some gifts wrapped. >_>
Fantastic Christmas message. And for me Christmas is about family not gifts, but the effort others go to in thinking about and purchasing a gift is nice.
I would love to see you do a category analysis of education.
My closest friends and family know me so well that they get me things I would choose for myself! I never thought about what it said about my relationships until this video.
I pride myself in being the most terribly selfish person... by helping my friends any way I can, because their well-being brings me extraordinary joy and fulfillment.
This logic is applicable to basically any other human being, immigrants, homeless people, oppressed minorities, etc.
Which is definitely something people at large could consider.
I'm sorry I can't afford to finance you in any way, but I'll share your content around as much as I can because I think it'll be beneficial for you, my friends and contacts, and ultimately me, because I will see some good I have made in the world.
Wear another jacket if it's cold, no need to turn up the heat! (I like my house at a chill 18°C, nothing a big sweater and a teapot can't warm up)
Happy holidays! :0
Léo Zaffran I'd never thought I would find somebody who thinks similarly in that regard. :) I, too, deem myself selfish, because I try to be good and helpful, yet this only serves as a means to ensure my own piece of mind. Mostly, at least.
I think if I give someone a gift they really love but wouldn't (or couldn't) spend so much on, then their happiness at having the gift that previously seemed unattainable would count as a gain, not a loss.
Loved this! We usually make gifts in my family, or we just give money. The holidays is more about spending time with each other than the gifts, anyway. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! : )
Awesome video. I loved the format and the pace was perfect. Keep it up!
Another consideration to keep in mind is that the gift itself and whatever bonding value it may have aren't the only things being "given" in a gift exchange.
Let's say that you have your eye on a nice $1000 TV. If someone just _gives_ you $1000, yes you could then go out and buy the TV yourself. But part of your mind might also be wondering if buying yourself a gift is the best use of that money. If you do buy the TV, you might find yourself feeling guilty about spending the money on something nice for yourself, rather than something like paying off your student loans or saving it for emergencies. However, if I just _give_ you the TV directly, you don't have to worry about any of that, and I think that has a value of its own.
To try to phrase it a bit more formally, giving a gift instead of money doesn't just _give_ the recipient the value of the gift itself; it also _saves_ the recipient the value of the mental labor that otherwise would've gone into choosing how to spend the money.
I know that presents are a social construct (I'm autistic, I'm very aware of social conventions), but for me gift-giving is an act of love. I've felt ignored all my life. Being given a gift makes me feel seen, and being given a gift that aligns with my interests makes me feel known. Both of those are invaluable to me. (And _literally_ invaluable to economists, ha!)
Happy Holidays
All your videos are solid, but this one is especially on point.
Returning to market theories of gift-giving, my family has a fair strategy to mitigate the 'dead weight' issue.
1) If the recipient is unlikely to be giving you a gift in return, and you don't have any better idea, give cash. You can't go wrong with cash.
2) In most cases, the best gift is something which the recipient wants, but would not normally be willing to buy for themselves. This creates value, rather than destroys it - the value of the item if they had bought it with money would have been net negative (they want it less than it would have cost them to buy it), but its value as a gift is purely positive (they did not have to buy it, and they -do- value it).
Now it may be said that I paid 20 dollars for something the recipient only values at 10 dollars... but that can be countered with that they would not have the specific item valued at 10 dollars at all if they were just given money. They are given something they want, that they would not otherwise acquire for themselves.
For example: My uncle usually receives some sort of unusual power tool on Christmas from someone. It's never a tool he would buy himself, but he likes making things, so the gift is on point. He now has the benefit of owning a tool he would never have owned otherwise (because it would otherwise not be worth buying it).
It comes down to the fact that utility-value of a gift is not strictly fungible and not strictly transferable. The value I place on the money I spend on the gift is nonlinear in the amount of money I make. The value you gain from receiving the gift is not necessarily related to the value I spent on acquiring it. If I spend 20 dollars on a gift that you would not normally buy for yourself, as you only value it at 10 dollars, but I make enough money that my personal valuation of that 20 dollars is less than your personal valuation of that item, then in some sense net value is created. Or, perhaps, I gain some value in the act of spending that 20 dollars and giving you a gift. The value I gained in the act, plus the value you gained in receiving the gift, could well be higher than the value of that 20 dollars.
So gift giving need not be some mystical non-market, non-utility idea. It merely takes a more nuanced idea of utility-value, taking into account all parts of the action.
For the record, there are economics texts that discuss the value of gift giving mot as a matter of pure economic exchange-where there is a deadweight loss-but as a combination of exchange and "signalling." The point of gift giving is both to "get you something nice" and "signal" to the recipient that you value their relationship enough to have gone to the trouble of getting them a gift, and a card, and wrapping it and all that. The wrapping of presents, which can take some time, is particularly economically destructive, because no one values the wrapping paper or the bow or the time it took to get it done anywhere near the cost to the gift-giver. The signalling creates its own value (not in a measurable "cash value" sense but in the more general sense of creating good feelings and "utility."
Signalling explains the problem of giving cash. It may be the economically "best" present when it comes to deadweight loss, but it is also a "gift" that would not have taken the gift giver any time to procure or have required him or her to have any particular knowledge of the types of things the recipient might like. As a result it fails to convey that the gift giver places any special value on the relationship being honored by the gift. It creates a generally net zero transaction where I give cash to you which we both value at the face amount. (An aside, that might not be the case if the gift giver has a lot more money than the recipient since the marginal utility of the cash being given maybe less to a relatively wealthy gift giver than to a relatively poor recipient, so think of your grandmother giving you £5 or $5 as a child and the joy generated by that as compared to granny gving you the same gift as an adult.)
I also had the chance to meet Michael Sandel and asked him about the daycare "fines" specifically. I indicated that the outcome, to me, suggested that the daycare set its "fines" too low, low enough that they didn't feel penalizing to the average parent. Surely at, let's say, $1000 per minute, parents would be very distressed to be late (unless they are very wealthy indeed). The parents likely would have stopped going to that daycare at that high a fine level, of course, which would suggest that fine is too high, but somewhere between what they were charging and a crazy-high fine I expect there a happy medium. Sandel didn't expressly disagree with that but stated that his broader point was about how imposing the cash fine changed the nature of how the imposition on the daycare workers was viewed. I don't challenge that, but still am left wondering how do you punish late parents apart from cash fines? Refuse their business next time? That's not an economically good strategy unless you are certain you can replace them. Put pictures f them on a "Wall of Shame"? That might work, but I know parents who wouldn't care and who, once they were on the wall of shame, would probably feel justified in being late in the future for the same reason as in the cash fine sense...they can afford that punishment for the convenience of flexible pick up times.
In fact, the owner of the daycare, really seems to have found himself or herself an opportunity. Clearly parents wanted the flexibility. Nothing says that 6 p.m. or whatever time was set to close is in fact the latest workers should be working...the employees had just set their expectations around that time. If you adjust the expectations (possibly by hiring additional staff to serve as "evening hours" care providers), there is clearly a market to be served the gains from which could be split between the owner and inconvenienced employees. I have difficulty seeing that as objectionable.
Hey Olly, serious question here: What do your fellow students from university do for a living after they got their philosophy degree? I'd really love to study philosophy because it is - along with literature - the only thing in the world that really really interests me, but I'm a bit concerned about the job situation. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this - and those of the other readers of this comment as well. Also feel free to correct my grammar, I'm not a native English speaker, but I'd like to improve my skills wherever I can.
Lots of things you can do with a philosophy expertise.
The world needs more ethicians. There's even a market for experts on ethics. What with all the corporate ethics committee and so on.
Philosophy expertise is also vital to lawmaking. All lawmaking bodies employ all sorts of people with philosophy expertise. Philosophy of law is a thing.
Philosophy expertise is also very useful in creative endeavors and storytelling. Nothing makes a good antagonist like one with a competing, credible and coherent philosophical stance as the protagonist.
Also, all scientists need some degree of philosophical expertise, both to interpret the fact correctly, and to know what questions are worth asking.
I don't know if you get there with a degree - but you do need the kind of expertise that a degree provide to excel in those jobs.
Philosophy degrees are good for a whole lot of jobs. There are tons of jobs out there where they just want their applicants to have a degree, not caring much about what that degree is in. Philosophy students tend to do well in that area because they tend to be pretty good at connecting what about studying philosophy it is that will help them in that field. Myself I stopped studying philosophy and poetry for those very reasons and went into computer programming because I was good at it. That's probably the biggest regret of my life.
A few went on to do further degrees, one buddy of mine went into fundraising for a bit and I think is now training to be a DJ, I know at least one other who's gonna go into acting like me. Some went onto teaching, management, consultancy... loads of stuff really.
saemundar That's certainly the way you would think it works. Fact is people who get philosophy degrees have a surprisingly high hiring rate. It's true that there are few jobs out there where someone would be doing philosophy full time, but it's also true that the skills you learn from studying philosophy are highly transferrable.
I can also say that studying a craft isn't always the best way to get into working that craft. I got my highest paying programming job while I was still a freshman in software development because I was good at it and getting the piece of paper was really just a formality. Philosophy teaches highly valued thinking skills and so long as you can communicate what those skills are the world is your oyster.
You'll also notice that I said «philosophical *expertise*» not degree.
A philosophical degree - perhaps, fittingly - is worthless without the expertise it supposes.
Unlike some other degrees that allow to legally change what you're allowed to call yourself (ex - massor to massotherapist) or to become member of a professional order, which are valuable things independently of the expertise you might otherwise have.
Happy holidays to Olly and to all the Philosofans :D
It is showing your knowledge and care for a person... but also if you know someone wants something a lot, but they feel guilty spending money on it because they consider it frivolous, giving a gift might mean taking away that guilt from them while giving them something they really wanted.
BTW, everyone understands (including economists) that price of something is not the same as value of something to a person. Air is free but we all value it highly.
However, having a price on something will affect the demmand and supply.
IMO, when it comes to having a market for adopting children, the question to ask should be "is it good for children?" and not "Does it feel right to price children?"
What if free market for adoption leads to all these children getting adopted into good families, that would otherwise have to scavage landfills in third world countries to survive? In that case it would be immoral to not have free market for adoption event if some philosopher doesn't like it.
There is a difference between valuing a gift after the fact(and value judgment) and actual happiness. Yes you may have valued it less. But it doesn't mean it made you less happy. What you should have focused on is the fact that material goods usually have a short lived joy. While spending money on experience have more longer positive effect on happiness.
A gift, assuming it's thoughtful (no matter if you want it or not) will build another type of story in your life than an item you got yourself. If someone I cared about got me a really ugly mug for example, when I did not need a mug and even if I did, I absolutly wouldn't have chosen that one, I would still, despite not liking the item, still accept it into my life, simply because it is something someone did put a lot of care into selecting. If we then fastforward a couple of years down the line, that exact initial dislike would have tought us both something that about eachother (=we grew closer) and I would eventually grow fond of it, because it would have made for a fun story and play a bigger role in my daily life, just from remembering it. So even if I would have bought the prettiest mug ever myself the same day I got the ugly one, A few years down the line, I would no doubt value the ugly one higher. The sentimental added value can't be meassured right away, atleast in my experience, but will in fact make the gift more valuable to the reciver than the initial price payed. Also, yes, I did get an ugly mug as a gift from someone, it did break years later, and I did in fact by an identical replacement for it, for way more (it cost about 10 times more than any of the other ones I got... ) than I would have payed even for a really nice mug... this despite that it was in fact still ugly to me, as I had a phobia related to the image on it.
and yes, I realize the video is old, and I don't know if anyone will read this or if it's relevant to anything... probably not... but if nothing else it served as a good distraction from boredom ^-^'
will also add the sidenote that this in it self is not an argument for buying gifts, atleast not in it self, as it equally applies to things made or found outside for that matter.
what I value about gifts is the knowledge that the person (a) cared enough to get it for me and (b) payed enough attention to me/valued me enough to know what I would like.
Happiness and pleasure are two distinct things --- the former being longer-lasting and mediated by serotonin, the latter being short-term and dopamine-defined.
What an amazing and unexpected episode.
"I CAN'T AFFORD TO TURN THE HEATING ON" literally (as in literally not figuratively saying literally) me
Thank you, great as always! Happy holidays!
Ollie I love your chanel, I been subscribed for about 4 months now, and i think your channel is great I can't wait to see where its takes you. I have a question for you, I want to go to college for philosophy and do something with that when I'm older do you have any advice for me.
My advice is go for it! Philosophy is a great degree for keeping doors open!
Philosophy Tube thank you it means a lot coming from you
Allow me to butt in and say I'm doing something quite different now, but I don't regret my philosophy degree.
KRIGBERT that's good to hear thx
Happy christmas/holidays.
Last Christmas, my good-mother wanted to give me a gift, she didn't give any the previous year and she wanted to give me something.
At first, she wanted me to buy something and she would pay me the price, and I refused, what I proposed to her was that I would send her a "wishlist" of miniatures (one of my hobbies is to paint minis) and she would choose from that list, and everything in the list would be something I would buy at some point.
the gift of knowledge is priceless
Merry Christmas Olly!
Stirner would contradict this, but it is interesting to see your older vids!
How can you live in that cold, man?! Respect.
Well, partly because I'm a Geordie and partly because I don't really have a choice if I wanna save money!
Friendships assume economic equality and become strained or broken when that economic equality breaksdown.
I personally find the gift itself secondary to the symbolic representation of caring for another person. It is a reminder that caring for one another is important at the darkest time of the year. Reducing the gift giving to a commercial exchange robs it if most of the meaning and thus the value.
Merry Christmas, Ollie!!
And to you!
I would argue that Waldfogel is still right. More often than not, we *don't* actually know what the people in our lives want, and while it can be very emotional and connecting to get someone something they might not even think they'd like, more often than not, exchanging gifts can show someone how little you actually know or care about them. For instance, my uncle was so excited because for some Godforsaken reason he thought my mom would really love the Megyn Kelly book he got her. It's become a bit of a joke today. At the same time, I made sure to repeatedly state that the one thing I want is a razor, and this is possibly the only Christmas where I've gotten the thing that I actually wanted.
Today I learned the theory of school staff noticing whether children have been picked up or not and where parents are even expected to do so. Back in the day we had legs and bicycles and even school buses which brought the students home. If not confined in a meeting most teachers fled the premises even faster than the pupils, I think. When classes lasted as late as 14 h the cleaning staff would be the only still present in the building and had their whole work day still ahead of them. Nowadays stressed out parents block the street with their SUVs making it necessary for it to become a oneway to handle the massive traffic like they couldn't get their offsping in front of the PC to play Minecraft fast enough.
Here I thought I would have to question spending my surplus on loved ones instead of people in need, or maybe my eating of christmas-meat. Dodged a bullet!
I don't even have to try to equillibriate my money spending as I try to, since my spending will probably reflect my relationships even if I try to lie by giving better gifts.
Happy holidays one and all!
In the midst of New Years Resolutions and self betterment, would you consider making a video on Max Stirner?
I am old now, but when I was young a common saying was, "It's the thought that counts." I guess Dr. Waldfogel hadn't heard that.
Philosophy Tube:
Presents are part of the holiday of Christmas, aren't they? So does that make it a ritual?
No. Ollie, tell me: Do we not give people presents to show them that we love them? Is money not just a petty thing?
Back when money did not exist, humans would have gifted each other presents that may have been very valuable and expensive, yet even for poorer person (again, considering this is back when money didn't exist and this is based off of a guess of the types of families) they would have bought it just to say 'Well, I don't care. I love *NAME HERE* and really need to show it. Money won't matter.'
Also, you can't buy happiness, right? So if the value of a gift determines the happiness of somebody, they should not have been given a gift in the first place! For the most part, gift-giving is about expressing your love for others, is it not? Therefore, if the recipient doesn't believe they would have paid the value of the present for themselves, they just need to suck it up and acknowledge that the person who gave it to them did it out of love and kindness! Especially for children!!
Children nowadays think that Christmas is all about getting good presents. Like I stated earlier, its not. Its about understanding why in the giver's mind that present was given to them!
Thankyou. Sorry for the looong comment... had so much to say.
Also, I am considering a philosophy degreee for uni in a few years time, would it be a good idea to go through with it?
Cheers,
Rocky Road
Marcel Mauss, The Gift. The theory of gift giving that all anthropologist have to read. And it talks about competitive gift giving.
And for your debate about Immigration, to accept people into a country with stability from a place with less stability is mostly a duty to the world if the instability is to be blamed on foreign powers if they are political or military.
I'd say you aren't always necessarily the best arbiter of your own happiness, especially if you have financial obligations. Even if you could comfortably meet all of your obligations, their presence can compel you to hold on to money you don't really need. By buying someone a gift, you're guaranteeing that they'll get something they enjoy, as opposed to saving it for future necessities.
I'd say this is a good example of our idea of financial responsibility being somewhat biased. We tend to think of maximizing our financial stability as being responsible, but is it really if it comes at the cost of potential happiness?
I wanna wish you man a happy Christmas.
You really make me think about how society sometimes inadvertently shaped our perception
but someone wouldnt just buy themselves a bunch of things at once at a certain date, the fact that you get a lot of things at once combined with the factor of suprise is what makes christmas and birthdays exciting
I wonder if Waldfogel considered that the difference of what people would be willing to spend might be from what they can afford? If the $13B were all from that, that would be, in theory, an economic boon then, yes?
Thanks Olly, wishing you a great Christmas and New Year's! I have mixed feelings on giving and receiving presents, particularly when we don't know people well. Then I sometimes get a present that is of no value or interest to me. So, What is the philosophy of Re-Gifting?
Okay, from about 4:02 on I got really distracted by the tendril of hair that started slowly moving in to attack Olly's right eye. Is it a spider that lives in his hair, slowly moving in for the strike? I'm sure the philosophy was top notch, but the hair spider upstaged it. By 6:00 I had to pause and skip ahead to see if Olly still had his eye by the end. He did, but my hope of it surviving long after the camera turned off is low enough that I'm going to be on the lookout for prosthetic eyes in his next videos.
I had a wrong perception towards the people of UK. But it’s completely changed after hearing u.
You can measure the distance to the moon in degrees Celsius, use just multiple by a constant with the units degrees Celsius per meter. I don't know why you would want to do that, but can...
This is also assuming that things you can buy make you happy. In reality you can't just become happier by having more trash around. You can be unhappy by not having enough things to fulfill your needs, but you cannot become happier by exceeding those needs.
A good gift has nothing to do with the gift itself. A good gift needs an intended meaning behind it. If someone gets you exactly what you would have gotten by yourself it lacks any meaning, it just feels like someone bought the thing you were going to buy for you. I would argue that a good gift is rarely material.
Fuck yeah, I adore the philosophy behind economics! :D I play the rpg Mage: the Ascension which features a group called the Syndicate who focus on hyper-economics, probability, and value. Economic philosophy provides fantastic fodder for Syndicate econo-mancers.
Also, "The quality of mercy..." is my favorite Shakespeare line.
I know this is a fairly old video, and you may not see this, but isn’t another way to look at the discrepancy talked about by Waldfogel between estimated value and cost of gifts be that the people asked are estimating what the gift giver was willing to spend on them, and therefore the value of the gift would technically be higher than the estimated cost?
I was picturing my mom and when you asked how much you would have to pay i physically shook my head in disbelief cuz the idea just does not make sense to me. I could never stop speaking to my mom
I think the value lost in gift giving is why a lot of millennials are leaning into experiences as gifts. If you give me an object that I either would have paid half what you did or may need/want but of higher quality than you are willing to pay, I have to either store or dispose of that gift. It would be better in that case to either give toward the investment I would make in the higher quality item or give an experience that I may not otherwise have the chance or curiosity to try.
I appreciate the category error argument, but I am drawn to the economist's argument for a slightly different reason. Every year I buy things for my family out of obligation of signaling that I love them. This year, I felt far more satisfied buying gifts for my best friend's new family (he has
This is such a strange coincidence . I just read an article about this concept on a SAT practice test less than an hour ago.
My brother always gives me gifts that I would never buy myself but that make me far happier than anything I could buy if I just got the cash.
In employing somebody, you've just put a money value for their 8 hours of their life. Some are luck (like my self, a programmer) but many are not so lucky. I've seen doctors in my country working as nurse abroad. Most nursing graduates here become call center agents.
Of course, I've looked into this and search for a solution. So far that best one I can see is Worker-Cooperatives. Where the owners of the business are also the workers. It's like a partnership, but can be with more persons. This has been done in a large scale, not perfect, but still successful - Mondragon, Spain.
i am happy that you exist
And that is why all the Christmas gifts that i buy are pranks. It creates memories and personal enjoyment.
Im not sure money and relationships are necessarily category error prone. I mean some relationships to some people. But give me 5 million and as good as my parents are i'd leave them behind
Maybe that says a lot about me, or my relationship with my parents but i cant think of a single relationship i have that you couldnt buy off me
But certain irreplaceable relationships are more valuable than infinite wealth, such as potentially the spouse you've been with for decades.
It feels wrong to translate the value into money, but money can be turned into happiness and their relationship with you is valued in happiness.
For me though, personally I never give gifts to people unless I know what they like in the current time. If not, I give them Amazon Gift Cards. But I only had few people to give, and my friends likes to give random gift exchanges, so the issue of value for us really was irrelevant.
Could the deadweight loss be made up by the act of acquiring the gift? For example, if the giver got the gift from ebay and the receiver does not know how to use ebay.
A blessed Yule to you and yours.
Jason93609 Merry Christmas to you too :)
According to this logic, and I tend to agree, the current financial system - neoliberalism, people in a system of money - is itself an enormous *category error*... poop 7.30-ish Abigail made my point as I was typing it.
Actually, as a half of a couple that has adopted, “Bid-A-Kid” sounds kind of nice. It is INSANELY difficult to adopt a child (at least in the US). It’s still stupid-expensive. Maybe we could at least speed it up and make it easier
Brilliant
I ask people to give me money instead for just that reason. I vastly prefer to be able to spend on what I want, or on my actual physical needs like food
Maybe you actually do know what I want explicitly or implicitly, and the gift is buying it for me taking away the trouble of getting it myself.
But shoudn't we accept the supposedly large amount of money to never speak to our loved ones again so that we can donate it to charity?
Isn't that the moral thing to do in that case?
Also, I don't know about other people, but I see myself making new friends much easier than I see myself making large amounts of money.
And it's not clear that any singular human interaction I have would make me more happy than, never worry about having enough money to buy food/pay rent/fix something that breaks/get medical treatment if I get sick ever again.
Money, or lack of it, gives me anxiety, and I'd readily give up any one relationship I have with people to make it go away. Except maybe with the one person I know who fears abandonment - and it's not that I'd prefer my relationship with that person, it's just that it would seem unusually cruel to abandon the one person who fears abandonment above all in exchange for money.
To play devil's advocate, I'm not sure the reason no amount of money could convince most people to never talk to a loved one again is _actually_ because that transcends value or anything.
It might simply be that nothing that could be purchased with money would typically be of equivalent personal value. However that's not necessarily always true, for instance if you had family members being held hostage, then suddenly never speaking to a family member becomes a deal that has a clear value; namely how much the ransom is.
Look at you overlapping with Adam Conover. And the distinctions you made about Waldfogel's logic were pretty much exactly what I was thinking during that segment of the last Adam Ruins Everything. While I agree there's a category error there and that's the primary issue with his argument, I also think there are other, more direct problems. We don't buy gifts based directly on the value the receiver places on them, we give gifts based on the value that we place on the receiver having them. This is surely affected by the value we think the receiver would place on them, but the whole idea of gift giving is to buy something for someone that they Wouldn't buy for themselves, so paying more in order for them to have something that they want but still otherwise wouldn't have is precisely where all that extra value in the gift comes from. The gift can lose value if we fail to estimate the value that the receiver places on it (though I don't think anyone would disagree that giving someone something they don't want sucks), but not only does it not lose value just because we're paying more for it than the receiver would have paid, it's kinda the entire point.
You made a mistake. Woldfogel estimates 12 billion, not 13.
My bad!
All too often there is nothing a person particularly needs or wants (or they just want less junk). It's possible to provide them some kind of service but that isn't always an option. We sacrifice the environment, and put pressure on low income families (in fairness, I. cannot speak for them). People often work long hours during the holiday season-- shouldn't spending time with loved ones be more important than driving this process? Obviously, holiday shopping may be good for the economy and it is a tradition. But I still think we overdo it. We each have multiple occasions a year in which to exchange gifts, and a year is not that long. At least when you are an adult. Perhaps more monetary gifts or less gifts in general would be of value?
Happy Independence Day
Every time philosophytube crops up in my mind I keep getting nervous I might miss you next google hangout. Any updates?
Not till I'm back from travelling late in January. Probably best to keep an eye on the twitter :)
Philosophy Tube Ahhh not on twitter. I thought you'd know it's a stasi for the angry birds generation ;)
Hah, love Stewart Lee
From a utilitarian point of view we should probably give up the relationship, take the money and do something good with it. Save lives, maybe create fair jobs in third world countries, etc. It would be hard of course, impossible for most people. If I was in such a situation, I would be haunted by my decision anyway - giving up my closest friends and family or letting people suffer because of selfishness. Difficult.